Is the change from 15 to 10 minutes really beneficial?

By now, I think we’ve all gotten acquainted with the fact that we now have 10 minutes between classes instead of the usual 15. At first, it took some getting used to. Couldn’t really use the restroom or get a quick snack from La Prima without being late to class. “I’ll get used to it,” we thought. “I just need some time to get used to it.” However, that time never really seemed to come. The 10 minutes felt just as short in January as they do now in March. It starts to beg the question, what was the purpose of decreasing the travel time to 10 minutes, and is this implementation really worthwhile for students in the long run?

Many students around campus have a negative attitude towards this change. Riya Senthil, CIT class of 2026, says that she is “constantly late for class, which annoys me because it’s stripping away from my academic learning time.”

Additionally, the travel time might not even be that beneficial. Many professors understand that, because of this 10 minute travel period, students are going to be late to lecture. So, they don’t start teaching until five minutes into the allotted lecture time. This crunches the amount of information presented to students within the lecture, leaving students to be bombarded with key concepts without fully conceptualizing them. It’s at this point that we need to consider the extent to which taking away the five minutes from the travel time impacts a student’s learning and comprehension abilities.

However, others may argue that the 10 minute travel time is very beneficial when it comes to keeping a specific schedule. Most classes start either right at the hour mark or at the half hour mark (e.g. 11 a.m., 4:30 p.m.), making it easy to plan out your day accordingly. It also makes space for more classes, meaning that less classes are scheduled during moratorium time (between the hours of 4:30 to 6:30 pm.) This allows students to get more involved in the campus community rather than attending lectures.

Overall, there are multiple pros and cons for this new addition to the Carnegie Mellon schedule. However, we need to weigh both the benefits and consequences before coming to any definitive conclusion on the issue.